The BPA Ltd like to pretend that they strictly enforce their faux AOS Code Of Practice. The cat was out of the bag a long time ago however that BPA Ltd members can do whatever they like without fear of being suspended. Non payment of AOS fees will earn a suspension but everything else is fair game. But how far will the BPA Ltd allow one of their errant members to go before wagging their finger disapprovingly? Let’s put a typical ‘investigation’ under the spotlight and have a look.
Way back in June a motorist parked in a private car park with the landowner’s permission, clearly displaying a permit supplied by the landowner. Along came a
spider BPA Ltd weasel, who didn’t have the landowner’s permission to be in the car park, and issued a sPeCulative iNvoice. Instead of paying up like a good little victim, the motorist decided to get her appeal automatically rejected by the weasel only for POPLA to eventually clear her of any wrongdoing. For good measure she decided to submit a complaint to the BPA Ltd at the start of the appeals process. We may now begin.
Verbatim replies from the BPA Ltd are "quoted", in
italics and tinted
BPA Ltd regulation bullshit colour.The complaint to the BPA centred around Park Direct UK Ltd operating on land without the landowner’s permission. The BPA Ltd describe this as ‘very serious’ and the type of complaint they take ‘very seriously’ whenever they are commenting to the press over parking issues. The evidence sent in by the motorist included some of the following,
- Park Direct UK Ltd’s faux contract which shows they they have an arrangement to ticket a nearby car park owned by a different company.
- Google streetview images showing where Park Direct are supposed to operate and more importantly, must not operate. (these are the operator’s own documents sent into POPLA as ‘evidence’)
- A photo taken by the parking weasel showing the motorist’s car in the car park marked DO NOT TICKET. Note time as being late at night so as to catch legitimate users.
- A letter and email from the landowner detailing how the landowner has repeatedly told the operator to cease and desist but they have continued ticketing anyway. The email shows they were told to stop just three weeks before this final round of rogue ticketing.
The first reply back from the BPA Ltd asked the motorist to
“please confirm the full name of the operator, this will prevent any confusion between the operators similarly named.” The motorist had referred to the operator simply as Park Direct in the initial complaint. There were no similarly named AOS members but the motorist diligently replied with the full name of the operator along with their address, website and where the BPA Ltd could find the listing on their own list of AOS members.
The BPA Ltd’s next reply was most illuminating.
“We can confirm Park Direct UK Limited are a member of the BPA and part of the Approved Operators Scheme (AOS).” That’s it, just a confirmation of what was already known.
After a month had gone by the motorist’s inbox was feeling decidedly unloved so she again contacted the BPA Ltd to ask if the AOS investigations team were likely to carry out any investigations. Their reply was simply astonishing,
“We do not have the authority to intervene in the appeals process and as advised do not investigate cases being heard by POPLA.
If during the appeals process POPLA find there has been a breach of the BPA Code of Practice, we will be advised and apply our internal processes to the breach.” The motorist was not at all happy so fired off another email highlighting a page on the BPA Ltd’s own website containing the exact phrase,
"………….addressing compliance issues that have arisen from complaints made by members of the public." She asked directly whether or not members of the public were welcome to complain to the BPA Ltd. The BPA Ltd then realised that only a professionally crafted fob-off would suffice for this case so set about crafting one.
“We have given your case reference BPA-05246 and ask that you quote this on any future correspondence.
We have contacted the operator concerned regarding the issue you have raised and once we have received a response to our request we will be in contact with our findings.” That’s right. Amazing, isn’t it? They had the contact details of the landowner to verify that their operator was in fact operating on land without the landowner’s permission but thought the best course of action would be to contact the operator and ask them if they had breached the Code Of Practice.
Another five weeks went by with nothing further so it was time to gee them up to find out what was happening. The BPA Ltd may have simply forgotten to fob the motorist off in a timely fashion but later the same day they had managed to remember being contacted by the operator so replied,
"The operator has confirmed that they do not hold a contract with Asra as you stated previously but do have a contract with another company to operator[sic]
on a defined area covering certain flats.
The area that they manage for their client is monitored by issuing them with permits and any Asra residents are not permitted to park there and therefore will receive a parking charge notice.” Whilst this was very interesting and educational the motorist had not parked in the other company’s car park and resented the implication.
The motorist then replied that the issue was unresolved and described in great detail the exact layout of the area complete with satellite view links along with all the relevant documentation again demonstrating conclusively how the operator had deliberately operated on land it not only had no authorisation to operate on but was told repeatedly to stop. Another month went by without reply so the BPA Ltd were pinged again. They were kind enough to reply this time,
“We have contacted the operator again regarding this issue as they did respond stating that they were investigating further but have not as yet received an update.” That’s it, contacted the operator again and asked them if they were absolutely certain they had not breached the Code Of Practice and could they investigate themselves if they were not too busy invading car parks.
The motorist, now experienced in waiting for the BPA Ltd, contacted them a week later to see if Park Direct UK Ltd had finished investigating themselves. The BPA Ltd thought they’d try the new tactic of ignore her and she’ll probably go away. The motorist has a strange fetish where she enjoys being lied to so emailed them again another week later wondering why her last email was not even replied to. Most of the BPA Ltd’s bullshit reserves had been depleted by various Monday Musings so they were forced to call in professional fob-off artist Peter
WBeasley for a top class fob-off,
"I have been asked by my colleague to review this case.
The question being whether Park Direct UK, had a contract and the authority to issue Parking Charge Notices (PCN) in Glover Close, Abbey Wood. I note that the PCN issued to you was dated 2nd April 2014.
I have looked at the original contract that PARK Direct had with their client ‘Housing for Women’. The areas covered include Glover House, Abbey wood Road, SE2 9DX.
This kind of issue has come up on a few occasions, where the parking operator has on good faith accepted the landowners (or agents) word that the land that they are requested to operate on, is indeed owned by them.
Park Direct have gone back to the landowner to seek clarification, and are still awaiting the land registry documentation. They have however received confirmation from their client that Glover Close, is not part of the ‘Housing for Women’ land.
The information originally provided by a manager of the above association, who is no longer there.
They have informed us that no further tickets will be issued.
In conclusion this is not a breach of our code of practise,[sic]
as the site and its boundaries were taken on in good faith with the ‘Housing for Women’ association.
We will be closing off this case.” Impressive, huh? No mention of what the landowner had to say. Nor even anything resembling an apology for all the months of having to deal with an unlawfully issued invoice. If anyone wants to save the time and hassle of dealing with the lackadaisical BPA Ltd, they could complain directly to the operator. Tell the operator that if they find that they have behaved inappropriately they can then issue themselves some sanction points and refrain from accessing the DVLA database for a week as a form of penance. This will yield an equal chance of the operator being suspended while cutting the biblically useless BPA Ltd out of the equation.
In the interests of accuracy it is not known if the BPA Ltd even contacted the operator at all. We simply have their word for it. Apart from the last fob-off from Peter
WBeasley the replies all seemed to be of a generic nature. An example of which is,
“We are unable to give details of the contract as this information is not on[sic]
the public domain.” This may have been selected from a drop-down box as the motorist had sent the BPA Ltd a copy of the contract with the original complaint.
Among the attachments is the ‘typical BPA spin’ that appears in news articles on parking. If this case is an example of taking a complaint very seriously, then not giving a flying fuck cases must take centuries to complete. Another attachment, BPA Trolling, was their tweets following the portrayal of the BPA Ltd and the private parking industry on BBC Watchdog earlier in the year. They spammed and taunted both BBC Watchdog and the NoToMob for a whole week pretending that they regulate their members. I’m not sure they can deal with 100s of complaints. Just one clear cut case with all the relevant evidence proved far too taxing.
If anyone at the BPA Ltd objects to this topic, rest assured the site admins will take your complaint 'very seriously' and conduct a thorough investigation.